Leonard Pitts: Imagine The Worst - It Can Happen Here

[Hissyspit]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.pitts06jan06,0,4694690.story?track=rss

Imagine the worst: It can happen here

Leonard Pitts Jr.
January 6, 2008

The authorities would just come into your home, grab your mother, your brother, your dad, and take them away. No warning, no warrant, no appeal.

Thirty thousand people were disappeared that way, she told me. This was in an interview three years ago, and Ruth Cox was describing her childhood in Argentina under military dictatorship. Ms. Cox, a teacher in Charleston, S.C., said families never learned what happened to their loved ones. Or why. People were taken, and that was it. The government was not accountable.

My first response was a vague pride that those kinds of things can't happen here.

My second response was to realize that my first response was naive. These last years have provided a jolting education in the sorts of things that can, indeed, happen here. Mass surveillance; detention without access to courts; no right to confront, or even know, the evidence against you; torture. And a government that is not accountable.

So last week's news that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the CIA's destruction of videotapes said to depict the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects is welcome but also belated - the very embodiment of the old saw about locking the garage after the car's been stolen.

Though we have lost a lot more than a car.

And here, a line from a Bruce Springsteen song seems apropos: "The flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone. Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't." Sadly, the list of what we won't do has narrowed drastically since 2001.

It's telling that a number of politicians have lately cited as their model on terrorism issues Jack Bauer, the counterterrorism agent on the TV hit 24, who routinely tortures the truth out of bad guys as the clock ticks toward catastrophe. It's not hard to understand the appeal. There's a certain atavistic attraction to the Jack Bauer method, an attraction that bypasses the head en route to the gut.

Too bad, because had the head been asked, it might have pointed out that Jack Bauer is a fictional character on a TV show not noted for its realism. Using him as a guide to terrorism makes about as much sense as using Barney Fife as a guide to law enforcement.

And the very fact that Jack Bauer is invoked in the most crucial policy debate of our time tells you something about the state of the union more than six years after the 9/11 attacks.

MORE

[sam sarrha]

1. read the 'Shock Doctrine', chile, argentina, Guatemala,, were the 'corner stone' if the process of

what is now Globalization. it is an out of control utopian Conservative ideology, that is justified by the suffering and destruction it causes... it is an apriori loop.

it is "BORN" of the chaos it creates.. Disaster Capitalism.. "IS" the disaster it creates. considering 'conservatives are mentally/perceptually deficient http://librocrat.blogspot.com/2007/10/conservatives-and-liberals-have.html

we will have to stop them in the streets.. this can only end in civil war if we dont get control of the government this time around

unfortunately.. this election is being stolen in the primary's, they are manipulating the elections to get us to nominate a candidate that is unelectable or will be destroyed as president

just listen to the media.. Obama came in first and Hillery came in 3rd... dont listen to that edwards guy he knows what is going on here. we need a Candidate that used crack and we can frame with any number of stupid white women.. he is charismatic.. but no background..

who ever CNN covers in the news goes up in the polls, Dean lost last time because the military industrial complex media edited his yell out of a tape of a cheering crowd, it was totally out of context.. a manufactured lie... hammered into the news and it destroyed him as a candate... edwards and dennis are also being edited out of the news.

the only ones covered are candidates who will keep the insurance companies practicing medicine for profit.. nothing will change

[Berry Cool]

3. What did you just say?

"we need a Candidate that used crack and we can frame with any number of stupid white women.. he is charismatic.. but no background."?

Is this the latest slur the anti-Obama forces on DU have come up with?

Can't you make your point about the dangers of this country becoming a place where people are "disappeared" without sliming any of the political candidates?

Obama as a crackhead sex maniac who can't resist white women...that's a new one.

[sam sarrha]

4. go back and read my post... not what i said.. we are being played, media is pushing candidates, and

shunning the actual anti-corporatist candidates that will actually do something

[Berry Cool]

5. Oh, I read it all right.

And what it said is that Obama is a crackhead who can be accused of having affairs with any number of white women. Before muttering some vague mumbo-jumbo about how he says he's for change but won't really be able to accomplish anything.

Evidence of the slurs, please?

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Berry Cool]

7. I am not on medication, so I don't need it adjusted.

Although that comment speaks volumes about how you feel about people who do need medication. Not to mention the other kind of language and name-calling you're using against me. But I digress.

If you are looking for the candidate so very perfect that the Republicans cannot smear him or her with lies and allegations, I don't think you will ever find that candidate. So singling out Obama as if he were a unique case makes it look as if you're the one who doesn't like him. That's your right, but you will never find a "baggage-free" candidate.

Also, while I'm aware that he has confessed to having used drugs in his youth, I don't recall ever having heard any sexual rumors about him, especially with white women. This is why I can't help but be suspicious about your post being designed to spread more lies and rumors about him under the guise of "concern."

[flashl]

2. It happens here ...

U.S. Gives Tour of Family Detention Center That Critics Liken to a Prison

Responding to complaints about conditions at the nation’s main family detention center for illegal immigrants, officials threw open the gates on Friday for a first news media tour.

They portrayed the privately run converted prison, open since May, as a model facility “primarily focused on the safety of the children.”

Once all the barbed wire comes down, Gary Mead, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, said, “it’s going to look more like a community college with a very high chain-link fence.”